The Bred Circle
by Rooster425
Summary: A case sends Harry Dresden overseas, where he butts heads with Sherlock Holmes, working the same case. But will the case be their biggest problem?
1. Chapter 1

Takes place between Turn Coat and Changes for The Dresden Files, and for Sherlock between A Scandal in Belgravia and The Hounds of Baskerville.

...

Of all the lessons Harry Dresden learned in his years, one of the most important was that when someone was knocking on his office door, trouble was almost a certainty. Being the only one in the phone book under 'wizards' had been, for about a decade, one of the more low-key aspects of his life. All the sceptical mockery, deriding comments about a wizard named Harry, and a one-off talk show appearance gone wrong were the least of his problems. In many ways, his office merely branded him as a weirdness magnet, centralizing all the insanity to a single room.

The office that had previously played host to not only a magical scorpion but a fairy queen, was a modest one. Much to his chagrin it had none of the office elements he daydreamed about. No leggy secretary to flirt with in his best Bogart impression, and as a non-smoker, the room was far too clear, the air too breathable, for his taste. Instead, he had informative pamphlets reading off information about magic and safety precautions when dealing with the supernatural. Most people rarely took them, fewer actually paid them any heed. All the furniture was simple and looked sufficiently battered enough to soothe his need for a more film noir office.

His head had been buried in paperwork, filing some information down for the country-wide network he'd set up a few years prior for small-time practitioners, a way to take care of the magical community too weak to take care of themselves. The knock startled him; most people called beforehand. Unless they weren't vanilla, in which case he'd be in for a lot worse than the typical job of finding household objects.

"Come in," he said in a low voice, only realizing halfway through the first word to speak up so he could be heard on the other side of the door. Whereas most opened his door tepidly and unsure of what was inside, there was a stark difference in the day's visitor.

A woman walked in, on the farther end of middle age but looking rather well for it. Everything about her said 'money', from her stance to the conservative purple dress she wore beneath a half-open fur coat, to the string of pearls around her neck. The red handbag was held so close to her body it may well have been stitched to her coat, and sticking out of it rather gracelessly was a thick, beige folder stuffed with papers. Her features were sharp and almost hawkish, yet there was a bit of softness just beyond her mask that reflected a little in her eyes.

He may have been in the book under 'wizard', but at the core Harry was a detective. A shamus of the spooky, but sometimes he found use for his abilities in more practical places than exorcism and vampire slaying. Before she even said a word he had drawn up a rough working of her. He knew that the softness was likely pain, something that had been taught out of her in high society and business. Had she worn a little more jewelry or been missing a few more years off her face, Harry would have braced himself for another visit from Queen Mab, but she may just yet have been sincere.

Only when she was seated in the chair opposite him in front of his desk did she speak. "Good afternoon, Mr. Dresden. My name is Brigid Rutledge." She extended a hand to him, which he accepted slowly. Her voice was stern, speaking with a received pronunciation accent-the 'generic upper-class English accent', it was better known as in the media. It told him she was educated, and likely more than a little old money.

He nodded slowly, fixing his eyes on the bridge of her nose. It was the closest he could come to looking her in the eye without actually making eye contact, something very dangerous for someone of his power. "What can I do for you, Miss Rutledge?"

"I'll be direct, if I may. My sister, Astrid, has been studying at home in London for a few years. Two and a half weeks ago, she and five friends were reported missing. There was little evidence to go by and few leads, but they suspect it to be the work of a serial kidnapper who has been troubling the city for several months now. Most troubling is that two days ago, one of the five friends was found dead in an alley."

She placed the folder down onto the desk, which had been cleared hastily of documents, and opened it. A heavy stack of photographs, copies of police reports, and other papers began to slip out, the topmost being a large picture of six girls in their twenties, all smiling at the camera. By the looks of them, all were students, all from fairly affluent families, but most interesting were the matching necklaces they wore. Gold pentacles, oddly plain for young women with visible wealth. They weren't for decoration, though.

A low worry began to brew in Harry's stomach as he looked back at his potential client. Most people not asking him to save the world came to him with matters of finding objects-his speciality-or the occasional haunting. This wasn't only a kidnapping, though, as he could clearly tell from the necklaces. The pentacle was a symbol that he himself wore on a silver amulet given to him by his mother, though it was currently hidden beneath his shirt. It was a magical symbol, used by some as an object of faith where they lacked a proper religion. The four elements and the spirit bound in a circle of human will. Granted, girls in their rebellious college Wicca phases adopted it more often than wizards, but few had families who would consider hiring wizards.

He played dumb, wondering just how much his client knew. "Why come to me with this? If it's some serial killer and kidnapper, the police are working the case. And there are plenty of London-based detectives who-"

"Are not listed as wizards in the phone book. If you are a hundredth of the man they say you are, Mister Dresden, then you know what those necklaces mean." She leaned inward, arms resting on the desk, hands clasped tightly. "My sister has magical talent. Nothing to your level, but she is the strongest of her coven. A coven that has gone missing, in its entirety."

He began to sift through all of the papers, and they painted a grim picture. Crime scene photos, a couple newspaper clippings, and more information than seemed even remotely reasonable for someone to have. "You suspect there's something deeper?"

"Most definitely. They know how to defend themselves against normal threats; one of them can even work a decent shield against bullets. This is a serious matter unfit for the police."

"This is a lot of information for a civilian to possess. I can't imagine they're letting these things to the public."

"I have ways," she said cryptically, her voice and expression unwavering. "Money can buy a lot of things, and my sister is very dear to me. I will spare no amount of money to see her safe return." She drew back, leaning into the chair with her hands still held tightly together. "Or to avenge her death. I am not magical myself; she inherited her skills from her mother. Father's business gives me my own sorts of resources though, and they are at your disposal."

"I'm not sure what my fee would be wi-"

"I have a bank account with ten thousand pounds, consider it an up-front expense account. Any of the remainder will go toward your fees when the case is completed. Hotel and transport will be separate from that account, and-"

"No transportation. This is all a bit much to accept, but if you think I'm the only one who can do it, then I guess it's worth a try."

"I insist, Mister Dresden, on paying for your trip to-"

"I can't fly. Planes and I don't get along. I have ways of getting there, though."

"Very well." She dug into her bag for another, smaller folder. "This has the details for the bank account, as well as contact information if anything comes up." The folder found its place atop the larger folder, and her hand reached up, offered to him again. "If that is all, I have another appointment."

He shook her hand, nodding slowly. "I'll keep in contact with you."

She promptly walked out, moving with a sudden swiftness that made her heels loudly clack on the ground. The abruptness of her leaving merely deepened his confusion, and his need for silence to figure things out.

"That dame is trouble," he said in his best approximation of a Humphrey Bogart voice, pausing momentarily as he tried to remember if that was even a quote from any of his movies. He shrugged it off, waiting a moment after she left before getting up, shuffling the files clumsily back into their folder and heading out. He grabbed his black leather duster and the large, carved staff by the door. With a flick of the light switch, he headed out to drive home and do some thinking.

Harry was an imposing figure, approaching seven feet tall and walking with a clumsy, withdrawn closeness. His motion was akin to someone walking through a china shop, painfully trying to keep their limbs reigned in to keep from breaking things. There was no scarcity in hallway space or door frame, making him look strange stepping out of the office building. His long coat billowed in the wind, heavy on his shoulders and making him look like he stepped onto the set of an ill-advised western too cheap for proper sets. The staff hit the ground as he set down the short staircase from door to sidewalk, a battered wooden shaft as tall as him. Beneath the abuse of dents, scratches, and scrapes lay a column of runic carvings with just the slightest luminescence to them.

Across the street sat his car, sticking out in the row of cars glaringly. A battered, pre-war Volkswagen was parked. Its original blue had since been mostly replaced with an array of colours he didn't bother to paint over, leading to various greens and browns. His trusty ride, the Blue Beetle, had seen years of abuse, crashes, attacks, gunfire, and mould demons.

It took several attempts to get the old car going, and he was almost about to give up and call his mechanic when it finally gave up and cooperated. Stubborn old machine. He pulled into the traffic lane and set off home. His new client's visit gave him a lot to think about. Practically everything she had said worried him in some way, wrapped up in a big ball of convenience. None of it was good.

The drive home didn't provide him with enough time to fully ponder things. He pulled up in front of his boarding house, and wondered if he was entirely safe. Strange women walking into his office, especially with a story about a missing sister, were the sorts of things that would lead to being attacked by gunmen soon after. His eyes dragged across the area around him as subtly as possible, making great use of his mirrors, and found nothing. One hand gripped the staff tightly, while the other reached into his coat for a shiny revolver. Opening the car door while handling a gun in the same hand was likely on several lists of gun safety violations, but he chose one safety over another.

Air was tense, thick with worry and stillness. It was that intermediate point in the afternoon when people weren't doing much of anything, too early to be back from their days. Mrs. Spunkelcrief, his landlady, was thankfully not looking out her window as he stepped out brandishing a gun. A shield spell was sitting in the forefront of his mind, ready to go the moment anything moved. He kept a brisk pace up to the door of his basement apartment, not too fast to look paranoid, but not slow enough to keep him as a still target. Getting to his door was the easy part, though.

A few years ago, some zombies had thrown themselves at his defences, and the worst lasting damage was what they had done to his door. The replacement wasn't installed properly, being too heavy and too wide. It took several tackles with his large frame just to knock it open enough to worm his way through, which made him a sitting duck. He wondered why he entrusted the job to such a lazy contractor as opposed to a carpenter who was a very close friend of his. On the bright side, if it was so hard for him to get in, it at least served as an extra line of defence Beyond them were his wards, set up to protect his apartment. Any who didn't possess a special talisman couldn't enter, said items given only to family and close friends.

After working his way in and throwing his coat and the files onto the couch, he endeavoured to shut the door. It was just a touch easier, and only when he was done could he relax in the knowledge that nobody tried to kill him. Yet.

"Flickum bickus," he said with the slightest bit of will. All of the candles in the apartment burst into light at once, casting orange glows across the room. The apartment was ungodly clean for a bachelor's basement apartment. Everything was neat, in place, dusted, and polished. The furniture was simple and cheap, not all matching and certainly not exquisite, but it was treated with extreme care and attention. Well, mostly. The sole exception to the care and love was a styrofoam container, laying open on the table with a plastic fork and scraps of food and oily sauce remaining in it.

His eyes drifted to the door leading to the sub-basement, left open and with a faintly unpleasant smell wafting up from it with a puff of smoke. He rolled his eyes, grabbing a flannel bathrobe off the hook and setting on down the stairway. "Maybe giving you lab access when I was out wasn't the best of ideas, grasshopper," he called down as he reached the bottom of his stairs.

His lab was cold, dank, and cramped. Tables crammed with books and strange jars lined the walls, lorded over by row upon row of similarly-stocked shelves. Somehow, a desk had been forced into the small space, which held more ingredients and dishevelled notes. Of note in the monotony was an odd shrine of burned-down candles accumulated upon more burned-down candles, piles of beaten-up romance novels beside them. In the middle of the mess was a bleached human skull with low, almost invisible orange lights idly flickering in the eye holes.

Standing over the centre desk with the source of the smoke and smell, which up close was a thick orange plume that shifted in multiple colours on its way upward, was Harry's apprentice. Molly Carpenter was several juvenile boys' fantasies rolled up into one package. She had the statuesque body of a Scandinavian exchange student, all long, lean limbs and curves where they were most appreciated. Her ever-changing hair was, that afternoon, bright bubblegum pink and teased up into a fringe that took more time to shape than Harry's entire morning routine. Her tights were torn up in the most tasteful of places that revealed the fishnets beneath, and her shirt was much the same way, showing off more than a few otherwise hidden piercings. Of course, all of that was hidden beneath a similar flannel bathrobe.

Harry often had to remind himself that she was his apprentice, and he had known her since she was a preteen, that it was wrong to look. When she was panicked and trying to keep the potion she was brewing from blowing up the lab-and not for the first time-looking was the last thing on his mind.

"I have it under control!" she exclaimed, hands frantically slamming on the desk in search of ingredients, either something to balance it out or something she had forgotten in the process. At any rate, the whole potion was a bust and he had little hope that the next ingredient wouldn't be the combustive element.

"No, you don't," he sighed, grabbing a large towel from the wall and using it to fan the smoke out of his face. "Leave it be, it'll fizz off of its own accord. Now come upstairs, I need a second head for this."

"Something wrong?" she asked, stepping away from the table and heading toward the stairs.

"Are things ever right? And for once, I don't mean your potion troubles." He led her up the stairs, groaning as he tried not to breathe in more of the fumes. On his way to the table, he opened up a window to air the apartment out and grabbed a few cans of cola from his ice box. He slid the files out and spread them on the almost-immaculate coffee table.

"A new case?"

"Maybe. I'm trying to figure out which movie my new client came from."

"Don't you do that on regular days?"

"No, seriously. She came, threw money at me, and made no strange sexual advances."

"Is that a problem?"

"If you've ever seen a detective movie, yes." He spread out all of the papers and set out to explain to Molly not only what she told him, but the information he gleamed from the reports.

The coven's abduction was linked to the disappearance and murder of four others on three occasions. There was no visible connection to them; different ages, genders, and backgrounds. Different areas, affluence, jobs... None of it clicked, save for the supplementary material involved.

Astrid Rutledge. Born in London, in undergraduate courses for English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Along with five friends-the other members of her coven, also enrolled in universities across London-she was kidnapped from their shared apartment, which was found destroyed and broken. All of the valuables were reported missing, a long list of insured items. It was the first time the suspect had struck a target with much in the way of money and items were actually reported missing instead of merely broken.

"You don't believe her, then?" Molly asked after he finally ran through the photos and reports with her.

"She has access to files she shouldn't have and was completely upfront about not only paying me, but giving me a large advance for expenses. She's being too helpful to someone whose job it is to dig things up."

"So, what? A trap, a con?"

"I don't know yet."

"So what will we do?"

"Whether or not she's telling the truth, people are in danger. We'll head to London tomorrow night."

"We?"

"Your family is on vacation and you're not allowed lab access anymore. Plus, it'll be lonely there, and you always wanted to travel."


	2. Chapter 2

My apologies to any UK readers if everyone sounds a bit American. I tried to use British terms where I knew them, but I probably missed a fair amount.

...

"My violin bow is gone."

Those were the first words John Watson heard that morning when he stepped out of his bedroom. Standing in the centre of the living room, a tall man in a black coat stood, arms spread out and fingers running across some imaginary landscape.

"It's nice to see you too, Sherlock," he muttered on his way to the fridge. "I didn't expect you would be home so soon."

"Yes, well, Pakistan holds few real matters of interest for me. There was little point in staying there too long." His voice was deep and thick, a hint of a nasal tone providing his voice a very smug and weary edge. A bit on the long side, he had a slenderness to him that wasn't entirely natural. His face was gaunt, all of his features defined by their slimness-particularly, his cheekbones. Short black hair lay unkempt and largely left to its own devices, curling every which way. He faced off to the side, away from Watson, eyes poised on the bookcase. "Now then, the bow. Where is it?"

The former solider made his way to the fridge and shrugged, "What do you mean?"

"The violin bow. I know you hid it, now tell me where it is." Before waiting for a response, his eyes shut, then opened again with a stark change of expression. "The apartment's been dusted recently. Thorough, not like Mrs. Hudson, and certainly not the way you clean the apartment. It's to confuse me, make sure there's no line in the dust so that I can't tell what's been moved."

"Or," John said, putting the kettle on the stove-top, "You're paranoid and just forgot where you put the bow."

"I don't forget things," Sherlock snapped at his flatmate. "You've obviously hidden it somewhere in the apartment, and as an afterthought you had Mrs. Hudson dust. Very clever, John; you've learned something in our time together. But, unfortunately, you made half a dozen other mistakes in the process." He stepped over to the bookshelf and began running his eyes along the rows of books, checking them for order and any that were just slightly outward.

John sat down at the table by his laptop as he waited for the water to boil. "Well, it's good that Sherlock Holmes is on the case." John Watson was a solid-looking man, though he had lost some of that solidness since his time as an army doctor. He was neat and well-kept, his short, light brown hair beginning to show signs of greying earlier than it probably should have been. In many ways, living with Sherlock was likely to blame for that more than anything he'd seen in Afghanistan. "What shall I call this one? 'His Lost Bow'?

"You're mocking me."

"And you're thinking this is far more clever than it is. Where did you leave your bow?"

"Next to my violin, on the table."

"What is next to your violin now?"

"A stack of newspapers and post-its with messages from Lestrade."

"Have you considered looking beneath those papers?"

"Of course I-" Sherlock stopped, turning around to look at the papers, and stiffened up his stance a little. "Right. Well, good show." He scurried over to the table, pulled his violin bow from beneath the pile, and sat down beside it, pulling his violin to his shoulder.

"Aren't you going to read them?"

"The notes are likely Lestrade asking me to consult on the recent string of kidnappings and murders. It would be too early for him to be in his office, and you'll need your tea, which should be done boiling in a second."

"Oh, so you've been keeping up on-" John was cut off by the sudden, high-pitched whistling of the kettle and then the discordant scratch of an unpleasant violin note. He pulled himself out of the chair and set back off for the kitchen. "Well, everything is back to normal, then. Except for one thing. Your case in-"

"I told you," he interrupted his flatmate, "It turned out to be far less interesting than I expected it to be. It's not even worth getting into."

"Was everything alright?"

The detective scoffed and halted his playing. "Yes, fine. Why do you keep asking questions about it?"

"That's what people do when someone disappears for three weeks and comes back unannounced."

"Really? Well, perhaps next time."

"What? Perha-something has gotten into you."

"I'm fine. It's you who keeps pressing on about something unimportant."

John set the teabag down into his water and sighed with defeat. "Fine. Consider the issue dropped." No sooner had he given up than the atonal scratching continued. "Glad you're back. Things were a bit too quiet and sane without you."

...

Yellow tape isolated a London alleyway, somewhere downtown that was nondescript and grimy enough to make for an unspectacular body dump. Several police cars lay on both ends of it, and distraught-looking officers waded about in processions, exchanging knowing looks that said everything nobody wanted to admit out loud, especially in front of the boss.

The recent string of kidnappings and murders had sent London into a fright. There was a senselessness to it, a lack of any seeming connection between the victims, that made the acts all look random. Randomness meant at any time, anybody could be the next victim. The most recent had been a group of university students, and nothing sent the media into a frenzy more than the disappearance of young women. The sudden turn-up of one of the girls, dead had drawn a swarm of reporters that only contributed to the dark atmosphere of the crime scene. With pressure from higher-ups to find the killer, and a growing sense of despair amongst the entire police force, everyone was on edge and frayed-looking.

Detective Inspector Lestrade stood stoically over the body, holding his composure better than any of the others. He'd been assigned after his string of successes with bizarre cases, including another serial killing a few years prior. Of course, the higher-ups didn't know that he owed the credit to another man, his ace in the hole, who wasn't even in the country. Because of his record he felt the heat more than anyone; his fall would be the hardest. He was a respectable and dependable-looking man, in his nice clothes and with his nice watch. His greying hair showed the same resilience he did, still fighting to its very end to retain youth and colour. Every word he spoke remained solid and stern, keeping order on the crime scene as he tried to hold himself together.

Murder victims were always an unsettling sight, but few were as disturbing as the girl who lay on the ground. Vanessa Hao, twenty two. Daughter of a Chinese CEO and an heiress from Birmingham, student at the University of Arts London. The picture sitting on a particle board in the office showed her as attractive, young, and happy. Her long black hair was done up in a bun and she was dressed nicely for a night out with friends. It was a still shot of youth and joy. By contrast, the mangled body in the alley looked beaten, dirty, and ravaged. Her hair was messy, caked with dirt and blood, and in some places appeared to have been torn or cut. Her soft, pale skin was caked with dirt and marred with various scars, bruises, and cuts. She lay crumpled on the ground carelessly, mangled limbs lying limp. A portrait of happiness destroyed and prospect crushed.

For Lestrade, it hit harder than any of the other victims found, of which there had been three. The picture of the six girls was burned into his memory, and here lay one of them. It was real, hitting him deep, like he knew her. Few cases ever set off such a powerful reaction in him.

"What's he doing here?" A voice shook him from his reverie, nasal and derisive.

"Who?" he asked, turning around with surprise. A long, rail-thin man tried to push his way through the barricade, groaning at one of the uniformed officers keeping press and onlookers at bay. "Took him long enough." He started toward the tape line.

"You didn't actually call in the freak." Anderson was a pale crime scene tech whose face turned into an unpleasant-looking sneer at the sight of Sherlock Holmes trying to push into his crime scene. His dark brown hair was somewhat oily-looking and parted down the middle, and his brow furled over his eyes, making them look darker.

Ignoring the tech, Lestrade shouted, "Let them through. They're with me, let them through."

The patrolman looked back at the detective inspector and shrugged. He lifted the yellow tape up for the two alleged consultants to get through.

"Where have you been? I've been trying to call you weeks."

"Karachi," Sherlock said, starting his stride and walking right past the standing detective. "Now then, the girl. Please remove Anderson from the scene and be quiet."

"This is my crime scene, why should I go?"

"Because you lower the collective IQ of the entire block more than any of the reporters from The Sun could ever hope to."

Anderson gave an indignant scoff and threw his hands up in frustration, giving Lestrade a weary glance. "Don't mess anything up," he sneered and set off.

"Let's see if you haven't done enough damage already," Sherlock murmured, standing over the corpse and letting his senses take over.

Watching Sherlock Holmes observe a body was both dull and fascinating. He requested silence so forcefully that he would sometimes ask people not to think around him. There was a moment where everything hung still and he analyzed everything around him so deeply it was almost frightening. Nobody could move, leaving them bored to watch the genius traverse whatever world he lived in where the slightest of details were giant, flashing neon signs. Then, something would break in his demeanour.

He knelt down, pulling a small magnifying glass from his pocket and looking over the various wounds. A flurry of details struck him at a speed only his mind could process at any decent pace. Many were seemingly irrelevant had to be filtered out; little notes about her grooming or her hobbies. A deep inhalation noted, beneath the smell of death about her, that she had bathed recently. And no quick washing, either.

His eyes widened a little and a twisted smile broke on his lips. "Oh, this is curious."

"What?"

"She had a bath, maybe three days ago. Expensive shampoo and conditioner," he paused to sniff again, "Jasmine bath salts. What sort of person kidnaps a young woman and then gives her a long, peaceful bath?"

"None of the other victims were bathed," Lestrade shrugged.

"How about nail polish on the scratches?"

"Nail polish?"

With an exasperated sigh, Sherlock placed the magnifying glass back over one of the cuts and waved Lestrade forward. "Yes, nail polish. Look at these marks, there are flecks of pink nail polish along all of them."

"Nobody found polish."

"Assuming they were looking, knowing the coroners down at the morgue. Now, her jewelry is where things get interesting."

"She's not wearing any," John pointed out.

"Precisely. But, look at her neck. There's just the slightest line where a necklace would have been, something she almost never took off. However, that's it. Clearly from an affluent family and lots of money, university student, and yet she had nothing else. And the picture taken of the victims before they went out that has been making its rounds in the newspapers show no jewelry on any of them."

"Maybe she took it off."

"Are you even looking, John? The line, look at the bloody line. She's been wearing the necklace at least up until she last bathed, it would have faded if she took off two and a half weeks ago."

"So, we're looking for a serial killer who bathes and puts necklaces on his victims," Anderson sneered, walking back toward the body.

"Yes, thank you for stating the obvious. At least you have the mental faculties required to repeat information someone has already told you. Brilliant, you are. The other victims were male, but the first female to go missing, and she's been tended to and dolled up in jewelry. The bruises were all made by blunt objects, and too large to not have been from someone very strong and tall. The cuts are from another angle and depth, someone not nearly so strong. You're looking for a man and a woman. Was one of the girls wearing pink nail polish in the picture?"

Lestrade shut his eyes, regretting that he was thinking back to that picture. "Yes, one. Astrid Rutledge."

"I take it you have a clearer image than the newspapers? I'll want to take a lot at it."

"Why does it matter what colo-"

"Stop speaking, Anderson. You're filling my brain with noise. If the shades match up, then she might be the female accomplice. Ooh, this is wonderful!"

"Ten people are dead or missing!" John said incredulously."

"And one of them may be the perpetrator! This case is getting better by the minute."

Anderson stared blankly. "Do you realize what you're saying?"

Lestrade cut in, "Do you know what you're implying? If I bring this to the press they'll have my head for even implying that. I can hardly even think it myself."

"Then don't. Keep turning your wheels in the mud and incompetently stumbling about, I'll go find the serial killers. Come John, I think I've seen all I need to, and we have places to be."

John nodded, starting to walk before stopping and shaking is head quickly. "We do?"

"Yes. We're going to the morgue to see what else has been..." He trailed off, having lifted his head and found himself caught up by something he hadn't seen. There was a loose brick on the building he faced, and a piece of paper jutted out of the mortar maybe five feet away from where Lestrade stood. With long strides, he reached the paper quickly, snatching it from the building. "Did nobody see this?"

"See what?" Lestrade asked, leaning over.

"This paper!" He unfolded it, and his head tilted.

The plain white paper was written on in ink, seemingly from a quill by the strokes and occasional fading. "Seek the truth that lies in magic." The handwriting was delicate and practised, beaten in its elegance only by the precision of it. Below it was an even more breathtaking sight, bizarre symbols meant to invoke some kind of mystic meaning flowing just as expertly as the words. Six markings of no meaning to Sherlock lay between two circles. The inner circle held a deeper, more integrated set of symbols that merged together, slight variations across what would at a quick glance appear to be the same group of symbols interlocked and repeated six times.

It took a second for him to catch every minor detail in the drawing and commit it to memory before handing it to the detective inspector. "Go back and check the previous crime scenes, see if you missed any notes and try to salvage your reputation." He turned on his heel, adjusted his collar, and started off for street.

"Wait, what does all this mean?" Lestrade called after him and John, who had followed after his partner.

"I have no idea. Meaningless trash is my guess."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I am. Magic isn't real."


	3. Chapter 3

Impromptu trips across the sea were not anything Harry was used to. Going out of town, he was prepared for, but on such short notice a lot of his usual preparations were down the drain. Dragging Molly with him meant he couldn't just have someone drop by every day and refill the food bowl for Mister, his bloated monster of a cat. Eventually he found someone willing to take him for an indeterminate length of time; his friend Butters, a nebbish mortician. That wasn't even getting into Mouse, his alleged foo dog. Harry decided it would be better to bring him, not only because finding a sitter would be hell, but because Mouse had saved his ass more than once and it wasn't a bad idea to have backup.

Backup. It hit him just how alone he was going to be. Molly and Mouse had their strengths, but if things got nasty, he'd largely be on his own. There'd be no Knight of the Cross coming to cut down a demon that had come up on him from behind. If he was captured and tied to a chair, his vampire brother Thomas wouldn't kick down the door with a shotgun. There'd be no friend on the force to-

Oh, hell. Police. Things just got even worse. Detective Sargent Murphy was probably Harry's best friend and definitely the most important mortal connection he had. Former head of Chicago P.D.'s Special Investigations unit, she had turned what was usual a career's death sentence into a way to help people. Assigned all of the weird cases that needed plausible explanations but were often of supernatural origin, she had called on the only wizard listed in the book to consult. The consultant's badge got him into crime scenes the division worked, where he could get a firsthand feel for things like residual magic. On many of the crime-related cases he worked, it was an important asset that helped him find leads. It was doubtful that Scotland Yard would let him in, whether he told them the truth or a half-truth.

He'd be on his own. Getting out of trouble was the least of his problems with the realization that even working the case would be a headache.

A few minutes after Butters picked up Mister, Molly showed up at his door with a massive backpack full of altogether far too many things. Harry wanted to notice how the front strap was locked and pushed her breasts up, but no, he was a better man than that. Sort of. Not really.

"I'm all packed," she said, unclasping it and letting it fall by the door. "And haven't even started."

"We're going through the ways," Harry muttered as pulled a duffel bag out from under the couch, "Not escaping the Nazis through the alps. And I have one bag packed, but it's hard trying to find someone to cat sit indefinitely. I'm not even done my ca-Hell's bells."

"What?"

"I still have to call Luccio to track down a Warden in London I can meet with."

"And?"

"Would you want to call someone up after what happened?" He made his way over to the phone, dialled the number, and shit his eyes tightly.

. Every ring until somebody picked up was a pain, drawn out over forever as he wondered if he'd even be able to keep himself from saying something stupid. In all likelihood, Anastasia Luccio, captain of the Wardens, would be on the other end. A few months earlier, his romantic relationship with the White Council's chief of police took a very awkward turn involving a traitor on the council and mind control. Their breakup was a given after that, and they almost never spoke after that. When Warden business came up, it was usually someone else calling him up. This time, there'd be no such luxury. Had he not been so out of his element, he wouldn't have considered calling at all, but there were lives on the line.

After the fifth ring, the clicking sound of a phone pulled off the hook, and his heart crashed into his stomach.

"Hello, this is Warden Hutchens," came a male voice on the other end that was entirely unfamiliar to him, and just a little daft.

Instead of words, Harry responded with a loud breath of relief. "Er, hi. I-it's Warden Dresden."

"Is it regarding anything personal? Because Commander Luccio is in a meeting with Wizard McCoy and-"

"Oh no, nothing like that. Or even official Warden business. But, I'm working a case and it's bringing me to London. I was just wondering if I could get the contact information of the regional commander there, or even any local Wardens, as-"

"A 'case'? I don't understand what you mean."

"Oh, sorry. I work as a private detective on the side. I just wanted to know if there was anyone I could get in contact with to meet when I arrive in London."

A moment of stammering later, the resigned words, "One moment," were sighed. Seemingly without pulling the phone from his mouth, he shouted out loudly, "Is anybody here from London and able to speak with Warden Dresden?" The yelling made Harry wince a little, as did the no-quieter addition of, "I have some to speak with you, Warden. Please wait a moment."

"Are you okay?" Molly asked, seeing his expression as hearing some of the noise coming out of the phone.

Through gritted teeth, he snarled lowly, "There goes the next chief of police."

After about half a minute, which was enough time to allow his ear to recover, a new, also male voice answered in some British-sounding accent Harry hadn't ever heard before. "This is Warden Stone, what can I do for you?"

"Hi, this is Warden Dresden. I've been hired to look into the recent string of kidnappings in London, not sure if you heard about them, and it's come to my attention that the latest victims were practitioners I just had-"

"Not here," he said sternly. "We'll discuss things in person; I managed to wring a few details out of the dullard you just spoke to, and I think I know what you're after. When will you be in London?"

"Tonight, hopefully. I'm leaving within the hour, and by the Ways it's maybe fifteen minutes by the route I have."

Warden Stone proceeded to rattle off the location of a dive bar they'd meet at that night, along with a string of instructions and locations relative to landmarks that meant nothing to him. An entire notepad sheet's worth of little details later, and Harry hadn't the slightest idea how to get there. Everything would be a slow process, though. One step at a time. Once the time and location were run back by the much more helpful Warden, Harry thanked him and hung up.

"Okay, I have a source. Stay here, I'll pack my other bag and we'll head out." He called for Molly, throwing her a robe as they embarked down the stairs to his lab. "Bob, wake up."

The human skull that lay between candles and battered Harlequin novels lit up, bright orange flames in the eye sockets. "Good morning, boss," it spoke in an amused, sleepy tone. "What trouble do you need me to bail you out of today?"

"So far, nothing. But we're taking a trip."

"Ooh, where? To California, maybe? Please, let it be somewhere with a beach."

"Sorry, we're off to London."

"London?"

"London. Home of the American werewolf."

"If that is your sole frame of reference, then we are even worse off than I thought." Bob the Skull was Harry's magical computer, so to speak. Residing within the skull was a spirit of intellect, formerly of the Fair Folk until he pissed off Queen Mab. He had a deep knowledge of magical knowledge and theory, useful reference for determining a creature's weakness or brewing up potions. Since magic prevented Harry from using a computer and he had far too little space to consider investing in an arcane library, Bob proved more than a little indispensable, if a bit difficult at times.

"I'm bringing you with me," Harry continued, "And Mouse, and Molly. I don't want to be caught up in something without everything I have."

"And for my cooperation?"

"My client's given me a hefty advance. When I have some free time, I'll pick you up as many books as I can carry."

"Ooh, and they'll have different spellings, too! Oh, this is marvellous Very well, you may take me."

"Not yet. I'm wondering what I should pack, just to be prepared. And potions. Maybe I should get a few of those going when we reach the hotel room." 

"If you have an advance, then make the walk there easier and just buy new potion components where you can; you don't exactly make them with difficult objects. For dealing with problems, though..."

Bob, with his flawless memory, guided Harry through the process of packing things that seemed pertinent, such as some holy water and ghost dust, a powder made partially from depleted uranium. More mundane items went into the bag as well; a couple kitchen spices, for instance, as well as a thoroughly used and battered sneaker. The shoe had to be wrapped in a plastic bag before it went in, as Bob refused, despite his lack of a nose, to spend the trip in a duffel bag up against a smelly shoe.

...

Travelling by The Ways was a tricky thing. Portals to the Nevernever, the land of fairies and the like, were not difficult to make, but placement was vital. The Nevernever was a very nonlinear place, and its connections to the human world were even more tenuous, linked to locations by thought and association. A portal in his basement could lead to a place immeasurably removed from where a portal in his bedroom would go. It was a precise art, but luckily he had a few useful ones jotted down, just to help him get to some of the more important cities in the world.

The best way to London was through the back alley of a fish and chips shop a few blocks from his house, followed by a ten minute walk through a bland road that went right through the territory of the Winter Court, allies of the White Council. With the guarantee of safe passage, he, his apprentice, and his massive dog were a bit more at ease than they'd have been if they were in the lands of wildfae. It was one of the least fantastical parts of Faerie that he'd seen, but Harry knew that the flashier something was in the presence of the Fair Folk, the more likely it wanted to eat you. Or worse.

Continuing the thus-far running theme of 'all too convenient', the portal exited only a block away from the hotel where his client had made reservations.

The hotel was nice, certainly nicer than any he'd ever stayed in. He wasn't footing the bill though, so he didn't have to choose between a comfortable bed and eating. It wasn't any five-star, marble-carved monument to luxury, but it may as well have been compared to the roach motel his last Paranet trip had him holed up. He wanted to whistle Puttin' On the Ritz as he walked through feeling like a million dollars, but then he remembered he couldn't actually whistle.

"I'm not used to things being so easy," he said to Molly as they strode into the hotel lobby, right up to the front desk where nobody seemed to be tending to clients. There was no line at all, so Harry just rang the bell and waited. "And this is all still a little fishy. She's thrown all of this information at me, made the hotel arrangements herself, and given me money up front. I'm used to scrounging everything. Back in Chicago, I'd have been shot three times just getting here."

Molly smirked, "Don't worry, I'm sure everything will go south soon enough."

"You really think so? Or are you just saying that to be nice?"

"Good afternoon, sir," came a voice that made Harry's head jerk away from his apprentice and over to the desk clerk, who had finally come over. She was a spare woman, done up all fancy and professional, with a smile that said 'this is me feigning friendliness' and eyes that said 'when is my break, I need a smoke'. She was average height, but the almost seven-foot wizard cast a shadow over her, darkening her curly brown hair that was so treated with so many products it may as well have been synthetic.

"Good afternoon, yes. I have a reservation here, under 'Harry Dresden', it should be a two-bed room."

She nodded, doing some quick typing and reading on the computer turned at an angle where he was just unable to make out the words. "Yes, right here." She looked over Harry's shoulder at Molly and Mouse.

"Er, it's not in my place to judge, but is that girl-"

"She's an intern," he said plainly. It wasn't too hurried or stammered; he knew better. An abrupt reply would feel like it was rehearsed and likely untrue, while unprepared, it would mean the lie was hastily thrown together and ineffective. A natural response devoid of any overt signs of embarrassment or panic was the most convincing way to convey the truth. "We're here on a business trip."

"Oh, I see. Well, regardless, we don't allow pets in the rooms."

"Mouse isn't a pet. See, my companion, Miss Carpenter, has epilepsy. Her seizures can get very severe, and so she has to be accompanied by a trained alert dog."

"My apologies, sir." She pulled out a pair of key-cards and handed them to him. "Your room is 218. Please, enjoy your stay here."

"I hope to, thank you. I have a few requests, though. I wanted to know if it was possible to cancel both all television services to my room, as well as housekeeping."

"I'm sorry?"

"We're here on business, like I said. If the television is an option we'll get distracted, and I want to avoid that. As for housekeeping, I'll have a lot of papers out and things won't necessarily be neat, but I'd like to keep them in the order I have them." In reality, he was worried that if the TV worked, his magic may run interference, fry the receiver box-or worse, order a couple thousand dollars worth of pay-per-view porn. As for cancelling any cleaning, there were few things he needed less than for somebody to come in and see various papers and pictures of missing women strewn across his apartment, let alone dump out a brewing potion or panic at the sight of a skull. A skull that would probably hit on a female housekeeper.

"I understand, and I'll relay the message. If there's anything else, feel free to call down to the front desk, the code is 2 on your phone."

Harry reached out a hand, unsure if that was the appropriate thing to do but not wanting to take that risk. She looked at him bemusedly for a moment before shaking it, which at least answered his question. With that, he picked his bags up and led Molly upstairs.

Swiping the key-card was less of a problem than it could have been. Magic and technology didn't mix. At best, it would merely cause cute little malfunctions like making a car constantly flash the "check engine" light without problem. On a bad day, Harry could kill a security camera from a hundred feet. He couldn't have hot water or a fridge in his house, and being in the same room as a computer was a death wish. It forced him to drive a really old car and be careful when around machinery. More than once, the key-card reader on his hotel room door had shorted out. That time, he got in just fine.

Three bags hit the floor immediately. Harry's duffel bag of magical items, including his staff-he didn't need to look completely insane in the lobby, partly insane was fine-fell on one of the beds as it contained most of the more delicate items. The bag of clothes and various other items was thrown carelessly to the floor. Molly's cross-country hiker's pack dropped onto her bed, probably for fear of it falling straight through the floor if it wasn't dropped on a soft surface.

Everything seemed white and inoffensive. The decor was so bland that Harry wondered if taste could exist in the realm he had stepped into. The moment he sat on the side of the bed and sank downward, though, he didn't care if the room was painted as many garish colours as an art school reject could find. It was a thing of beauty, making him close his eyes and lean back against the bed. He wanted to peel off his coat, kick off his jeans and boots, and take a nap right there, case be damned.

Instead, he had to be the adult and open up the duffel bag. At the very top was the manilla folder full of more information than he had even finished sorting through. "We have a lot of work to do."

"We do. But this bed is so nice, why don't we just take a nap?"

"Because people are going to die, now sit up."

"Killjoy," Molly groaned. "So, do you think it might the Whites again?"

A couple years earlier, Harry foiled a scheme by the White Court, the human-like vampires who fed off of emotion. They had been kidnapping women, practitioners, with the intention of weakening future generations of wizards. Magic was passed down matrilineally, and by killing them, they could curb the population of magic users. Reports came in of the plot happening not only in Chicago, where shadow puppeteer Lara Wraith, the mastermind of the plan, controlled the Court, but all over the country.

"It's possible, but I don't think so. A few of the early victims were men, and the only people missing were the ones Thomas was saving, remember? I'm not taking Whites off the table yet, though. These police reports leave out a lot of the things police reports would leave out, and those are the details that will actually help us out." Harry dug through the folder, looking for a particular report. "Like here, on the first-"

He looked over to Molly, who had pulled the blankets up, slipped beneath them, and was trying to get comfortable. She let out a fake yawn and closed her eyes. Her hair fell onto the pillow gently, and there was a youth and cuteness in her face that made her look like a sleepy angel. If angels had bright pink hair and piercings everywhere. "Can't we start the work later? I have jet lag."

Instead of offering the obvious counter-point that they didn't fly, Harry merely groaned, pulled a dog bowl and a bag of kibble out of the duffel bag to leave for Mouse, and let out a fake yawn of his own. "You're right, I'm starting to feel the effects of it myself. Curse these foul time zones." He shook a defiant fist at nothing as he got down to his black shirt and boxers beneath the blanket and sank into the bed that was even more comfortable than sitting had made it feel. "It's a few hours, not like anyone's going to die because of it."


	4. Chapter 4

"Nothing on this one, either. Damn it."

Three victims' bodies were still in the morgue, and Sherlock had looked at all of them. There was nothing special to note about them that the police reports didn't already contain.

The most recent-aside from Miss Hao-was a male night janitor. Everything about him told a story to Sherlock, and none of it was useful. The calloused feet from standing around all day, the bruise on his leg where he tripped over his mop bucket. Needless details that he nonetheless pointed out to John.

He was looking for something more than stories, though. Stories of a dead man meant nothing to him; he was a dead stranger and the only story that mattered was how he died. Caring of anything else would be sentimental and needless. Like the other three, he was devoid of the cuts that piqued his interest on Vanessa's bodies. There was heavy bruising on all of them, signs of both struggle and straight-up beatings, but none of it looked completely fatal.

"Inconclusive," John read off of the chart incredulously. "How is this possible? People don't just drop dead like this."

"There must be something they missed. Procedure, poor tox screens, something! An incompetent mortician who had no idea what they were looking for. Who handled this?"

John flipped through all of the files, which had been spread out on a table. "Molly Hooper, on all of them."

"Of course. That girl has missed much larger signs in the past."

Watson spun around on his heel, looking toward the door apprehensively. It wouldn't have been the first time he spoke ill of the girl just as she walked into a room. Nobody was there, which soothed the sudden spike in worry that had shot up his spine. He turned back to face Sherlock. "Can you stop doing that?"

"Stop doing what?"

"Talking about her like that, especially where she works. She could have walked in."

"No she couldn't have. I saw the schedule on the way in, she won't be in until Wednesday."

"So that makes it right?"

"She could hardly hear me if she won't be in."

"It's still wrong."

"You said it's wrong to talk about her when she could come in. She's not going to be in today. What's the problem?"

John sighed, pushing some papers into the folder. "Right, I forgot. Sociopath. I'm going to photocopy these."

"High-functioning-" Sherlock started to correct John, but the sound of the door closing cut him off as his flatmate left the room. Without reacting much to their little argument, he reached for a black light and ran it over the pallid flesh in search of something, anything, that could help him. It ran over the janitor's round stomach, revealing nothing. Illuminating the bruises, the rope marks around his hands, did nothing to help. For all the beating he endured, nothing he could see had actually killed him.

It was a true mystery. Seemingly random kidnappings and murders with no clear cause of death. One of them was taken from a locked apartment that not only showed no signs of a break-in, but was still locked from the inside by a very paranoid set of six different locks. To most people, such news would induce a deep, lingering fear, a sense of insecurity that made even their homes unsafe. Lack of consistent victimology meant anybody could be next. To Sherlock Holmes, it was merely a challenge. The sum had to be broken up into its parts and solved, examined until everything fell into place. In the process, he would come off as clever, to be humble, and be saved from his boredom for however long it took to do so.

John came back with a thick stack of papers forming all of the copied photographs and reports tucked neatly under one arm, and the originals in their folders and similarly held under the other. "Have you found anything?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"So then what do we do now?"

"Go home. I need time to think."

...

The taxi stopped in front of 221 B Baker Street, and the detectives emerged, moving briskly to the door and up the stairs. Their furniture ranged in age and nothing seemed too keen on matching. Each wall seemed differently coloured in the living room, ranging from a beige wallpaper with dark red floral patterns to a very bland, drained lime that covered the wall closest to the street. Their tendencies clashed hard; John's time in the military lent itself to a very neat apartment, everything in place, while Sherlock was often too lost in thought and accrued messes easily. With Holmes out of country for a few weeks, though, the apartment was cleaner than it had been in months, ignoring the three bullet holes sitting in the wall from the last time he got 'bored'.

Sitting in a lounge chair, waiting for them, was a man hidden behind a newspaper. A black umbrella with a curved wooden handle lay beside the chair.

"Ah, Mycroft," Sherlock said snidely, "How considerate of you to let yourself in and wait for us. I'd be offended if my brother were to merely leave a message on my phone and not show me such courtesy."

The newspaper folded downward, revealing a wry expression. Mycroft Holmes was a stately-looking man who carried himself well. His grey suit was expensive-looking, finely tailored and anything, but restrained and subtle. He had some extra pounds on him, rounding his face and softening the sharp features he'd have otherwise shared with his brother. His brown hair showed signs of surrender, beginning to come out and leave him with a pattern baldness-induced widow's peak. "Perhaps," he spoke in a stern voice that held something airy and soft to it, "I would call more if I were under the delusion you would actually answer my calls.

"Well maybe if you weren't just calling to send me off on some task as your lap dog, I'd answer them more."

"I didn't come here to argue." Mycroft lay the newspaper down on the table. "There are more important things to deal with. At the morgue, did you-"

"The bodies were hardly were nothing. Nothing of interest on them at all, actually. It almost makes me want to give up the case for fear of catching an indomitable case of boredom." Sherlock moved across the room at the same brisk pace with which he had left the cab, settling down in his chair. John followed, a little more apprehensively, and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle.

"I would complain about you being childish and petty if I didn't know better. This is just the sort of mystery you can't resist, and it won't take any prodding on my part."

"If this is so important to you, then why don't you solve it? Since you are, after all, far more clever than I."

"Again, being petulant. I can't possibly tear myself away from the office to handle all of the legwork involved. And you tend to be a bit more unscrupulous about things, which may help here."

Sherlock looked at his brother hard for a moment, drawing his hands together and pulling them up. They covered the bridge of his nose as he took a deep breath. "You knew I was at the crime scene, Lestrade must have told you that because you've assigned him the role as my handler. Since you knew any amount of information about the case would pique my interest and, by your own admission, I need little prodding, then you aren't here to ensure I take the case. So there's something else. Information, perhaps. Or some kind of message. Something the police wouldn't be told, something just for me. The girls all belong to affluent families, so you're here to tell me there's more pressure than anybody is willing to let on. What aren't you telling me? This is somehow of national importance, isn't it?"

"Must you make things more complex than they are? You run off to the Middle East without warning for several weeks, and think I'm not going to make the slightest amount of effort to see if you're actually going to take the case? Maybe if you were the slightest bit behaved-"

"Don't lecture me about behaving," Sherlock said, his voice growing sharper as he reached for his violin. "You know now that I will take the case, and if you would please leave me to my thoughts, I may actually come up with something of use to you."

"Very well. Goodbye, Sherlock." Grabbing his newspaper and his umbrella, he set out, giving a nod to John before closing the door behind him.

Beginning to pluck at the strings on his violin without much care for tone, Sherlock settled into thought. "Mind what you say, John."

"I didn't actually say anything."

"I know. But you normal people always have some degree of modesty, and with somebody listening, I doubt you'll want anybody to know certain things."

"Somebody listening, I don't know what you-"

"Mycroft doesn't just 'check up on me', and if he wanted to help me solve it he would have given me some actual information. Considering that he was here before we arrived, it means he was doing something that required me to be out of the house. So that leaves two options; he was searching the apartment, or planting a recording device to listen in on me. Since we haven't come home since hearing the first details, and because he's done it before, then the answer is clear."

"Done-done it before?"

"Oh, not for a few years now. Sometimes he worries I'm plotting against him or some nonsense. He's a rather paranoid man."

"And you're just going to leave it there?"

"Why should I care? We have more important things to think about, like the case. I can deal with Mycroft's attempts to further intrude upon my life some other time."

"But what about your priva-right, of course. You wouldn't care about that. Well, hopefully he left the bathroom sacred," John muttered as he set off to the toilet.

Sherlock had stopped paying attention partway through, grabbing the violin bow and beginning to slide it gracelessly along the strings, abandoning his skill in favour of discordant noise, loud and unpleasant. The random scratching sound of string colliding with string in such an unruly fashion would have driven any music lover to pull the instrument from his hands to keep him from ruining something of beauty. But something had already been ruined, something more sentimental people would have called 'beautiful'. How paradoxical, that a man so indifferent to the world around him, a self-confessed sociopath, was the one people turned to as though he were some kind of hero. The girl wasn't of importance to him, though, nor were the four previous victims. The five other missing girls were about as important. All that mattered to him was the mystery, the rush of excitement when everything came together and he was again the clever saviour. The lives were a side-benefit that he wasn't nearly as concerned with.

When John emerged from the bathroom, Sherlock didn't even pay him any mind. The sounds had started to form music; actual, listenable music, as his focus slipped away from the immediate and muscle memory guided his hands in a more bearable manner. Seeing the living room was a bit more hospitable with Sherlock subconsciously playing music, John moved over to the chair by the table where his laptop lay. He didn't bother saying anything or trying to bounce an idea off of Sherlock, knowing his habit of sometimes lapsing into days-long silence and ignorance of things around him. Nothing would make him come back to reality until he was ready to, which could well take forever.

At least he won't be a bother, John thought to himself as his fingers began to strike the keys in a steady clattering sound. As a form of therapy, he figured, he'd started typing write-ups of their cases shortly after their first, and blogging them. It had come to drum up business far better than Sherlock's identification of tobacco ash, by actually detailing their cases. That was what showed Sherlock to be brilliant; his ability to retain the most obscure of information and to access it without delay. With a quick glance he could tell when somebody last ate, where they slept, and their profession. His own website just made him look cocky and insufferable. Granted, he was both of those things, but those weren't the sole traits of a detective.

Sherlock's phone beeped, and rather unusual of him, he answered it. Most times, he'd be too caught up in his meditation to do so. Such a strange sight was worth of John's attention, as he turned away from the computer to watch.

"Holmes," Detective Inspector Lestrade said on the other end, "Did you morgue turn up anything?"

"Nothing at all."

"What about those symbols you found? Do they mean anything?"

Sherlock scoffed, "How should I know? I haven't wasted a second thinking about what they could mean."

"The killer is leaving clues for us, and you're just choosing to ignore them?"

"I'm choosing to ignore distractions rooted in superstitious nonsense. If you want somebody to explain random symbols to you, hire a wizard or somebody and stop bothering me." With that, Sherlock hung up, turned off his phone, and settled back into his trance without another word or complaint about the police.

As John looked back at his computer and started to type, a strange calm came over John, a tired serenity as his eyes felt a bit heavy. He looked over to the computer clock, which told him it was only early afternoon. They hadn't even done anything particularly exhausting, and he wasn't one to nap. So then why was he so exhausted? The more he tried to fight the feeling and understand it, the deeper he fell, until finally, as the dim sound somewhere of a door opening ran under his attention, his eyes shut and his head dropped softly onto his keyboard.

Darkness followed.


	5. Chapter 5

When Harry awoke that evening with the blankets bundled around him, he was struck by a deathly chill. His eyes were open hardly a second before he jumped up, blankets starting to roll off of his body and hang loosely off his arms as he reached for his staff, leaned up against the wall. "Cold spots!" he shouted, looking around for Molly or Mouse. "This place might be haunted!"

He noticed that Molly was knelt on the floor, scratching Mouse behind the ears as both stared up at him with wry expressions as he loudly half-muttered things in his groggy daze, wearing boxers and parts of blankets, waving a big wooden stick around.

"I thought that..." Harry trailed off as reality hit him again and he noticed that not only were his dog and apprentice fine, but Mouse seemed perfectly calm. As a Foo dog, he had the ability to sense approaching supernatural danger, and he'd have woken the building with barks long before the cold hit him.

"The air conditioning is broken," Molly giggled, "It's probably magic interference, there's no need to go all 'movie caveman'. Put down the stick and get out of the Pauly Shore movie."

"Who?"

"Oh boss, for once being old has done you a favour. Now, plans. What are you doing?"

Struggling to disentangle himself from all the blankets he was wrapped in, Harry started to try and get dressed as he tried to pretend to ignore the way her eyes were on him. "We," he said with heavy emphasis, "Are going to meet the warden."

"We're coming with you?"

"It's a strange town, so you guys are my only backup. If things go sour or Mouse's evildar goes off, it's on you to get us out safely. If you want to be of more help, then how about on the way back we get a big particle board, plenty of thumbtacks and strings, and then you can make some big conspiracy theorist board."

"Okay," Molly said, getting up off the floor. "Fine, fine. Let's go."

The trip to the meet-up spot was not a very fun one. They found out from the first 'helpful' person on the street that the bar was within walking distance of the hotel, but gave them directions they had no chance of understanding. Slowly, they pieced together something resembling actual directions, until they stood outside of a very shady-looking dive bar. Nothing about it looked new, everything being grungy and looking worn, but still not weathered into qualifying as 'broken'. A large sign advertised in chipped, faded paint, "Hurley's". A distinct smell of liquor and unfriendliness struck him as he stood outside, looking back down at his hurried notes and seeing that he was, far as he knew, at the right place. He wished he weren't, actually, now that he saw how run-down it was, compared to the usual supernatural haunt back home.

"Get your game face on," Harry said, adjusting the grey cloak draped over his shoulders that he wore over his trench coat. It identified him as a Warden of the White Council, which would hopefully be enough to keep people from attacking him outright. The apprentice, who didn't exactly look dainty with her piercings, and the half-mastadon dog would hopefully help reinforce that. He was in unfamiliar territory, with no assurance that anybody would be friendly to him, and the best way to ensure he got out alive was to appear intimidating.

They walked in through the doorway where heads turned to look at them, then promptly turned back. For as broken down as it was on the outside, its interior was significantly better kept. He noted a similar manner of dispersing the tables in such a way to keep things from having any kind of pattern. Obtrusive pillars held up the cieling and contributed to the breakup of order and decent interior design choices. In reality, it wasn't laziness, it was a concentreated effort to disrupt magical energies by removing any semblance of flow. Gathering magical folk into one place wasn't without such measures in place, especially with the added wild card of copious amounts of liquor, was dangerous. Everything was lit by candles, strewn generously along the pub wherever there was space for one. A long bar stood at the other end, tended to by some grim-looking man in his sixties. It felt just similar enough to MacAnally's to feel completely contrasting to all of his senses.

Most of the people looked back down at their drinks at the sight of him, except for a few who seemed to be sizing him up, and a few who seemed deathly afraid that the grey-cloaked stranger was there to take them in. As Harry had learned, the Wardens had different reputations in different places, sometimes treated with apathy, and other times with utter terror. Most of the room didn't care too much about his presence, especially when another grey-cloaked man in the bar rose up and waved him over. Of course, the presence of the dog left everyone a bit on edge.

Warden Stone was a tall man, broad-shouldered and sturdy looking. The candlelight had a strange effect on his dark skin, casting an orange hue that lit his face up in a somewhat frightening manner that, when looked past, showed his youth and eagerness. His black hair was long and kept in dread locks that fell every which way from his head. The gey was draped over his shoulders, clasped closed to hide his clothes and one arm beneath it. "Warden Dresden, come over here." He motioned toward the bartender, who gave a grudging, staid nod and reached under the counter. "Is your apprentice of age?"

"She is," Harry said, "But she's the designated driver. Now then, business."

"Yes, of course." He sat back down as Harry and Molly drew out their chairs, and Mouse sat imposingly beside the girl. He reached out his free arm toshake Harry's hand. "It's an honour, Warden Dresden."

"Harry."

"George."

Harry's voice grew rougher, affecting a Scottish brogue. "Stone. George Stone? What's your real name?"

The local warden looked confused at Harry, tilting his head a little. "A-are you alright?"

Sighing, Harry changed back to his normal voice. "Sorry, I sort of drift off like that sometimes."

"That's alright, just a bit strange. All the stories we've heard of you, I sort of expected you to be, I don't know, scarier."

That drew a laugh from Harry as the bartender came by with some glasses of stout. That was, until he thought back to a few months prior. An attack force of several Wardens, accompanied by a member of the Senior Council, seemed apprehensive about attacking him. Through a combination of dumb luck and wits, he'd toppled some foes well outside of his weight class. On top of an unfortunate murder situation in his teens, and then accepting a warlock under his tutelage to rehabilitate her, he'd developped quite the reputation. Much of the old guard thought him Darth Vader waiting to happen, while some of the younger generation saw him as a total badass, like Wolverine or something. Stories were always better with embellishment, so people usually skipped over the difficulties to focus on how he rode a zombie dinosaur through town, or defeated the Summer Court's best hitman by having him fetch a donut. They just made better stories.

Stone was a young Warden, probably jumped at the chance to help out Harry Dresden, thinking he was far cooler than he really was. Instead, Harry opened with a few jokes and seemed far too friendly to be the grizzled badass famed in story that he was supposed to be.

"How about we pretend I keep that image up on purpose to keep people from trying anything funny, and get to business?" Harry asked as he brought the drink to his lips. It wasn't anywhere close to Mac's mead, but it was cold, for one. That was a huge plus. "You said that you had some information for me."

"I do. Those six girls who went missing are a coven, which I'm guessing you already know by your expression." Warden Stone leaned in closer. "But I'll bet you don't know that the janitor, one of the earlier victims, was a ritualist." 

True, by-the-book ritual magic was very different than the sort of magic Harry, or anyone who could count as a 'wizard', threw around. His magic came from within, an extension of his will and his life force imposed upon reality to bend it to his will. It was flexible and personal, but every spell took just a little bit out of him, and he could cast himself into a coma if he worked himself too hard. It also meant the potential for growth, though, and as he came into his powers, throwing a handful of spells no longer left him winded, and he could tap from his well far more often. Ritual magic was external though, a careful series of instructions that, when followed, resulted in a desired effect. It was like a cosmic vending machine, powerful beings granting wishes and favours for appeasing them.

"That has to be more than a coincidence." Harry noticed Mouse staring at a group of vampires across the table with a bit too much aggression, and pat the dog's head to try and calm him down. "How about the other victims?"

"I'm not sure, but I can try to look into it, maybe ask around."

"I'll do some investigating myself, but I'd appreciate the help. Now, just a running theory, but, has there been a spike in White Court activity here recently?"

"Not that I've noticed. Why?"

"A few years ago, I ended up disrupting a plan a couple of Whites had cooked up. Kidnapping female practicioners and forcing them to commit suicide, trying to cull the herd of magic users down the line. It's not the same MO, but it's the best theory I've had so far."

George shook his head."I wish it were Whites. I can handle Whites. Rumours say it's a demon."

Harry's grip on his staff tightened, and he could hear Mouse begin to growl lowly. Molly's reaction was much more blatant in her expression, wincing and looking off to the side. "A demon," he repeated. "Hell's bells. Is it a Denarian?"

"I wouldn't know if I saw one, and those who've seen it certainly wouldn't. They know enough to tell a demon from a vampire or garden variety Fae, but not much else."

"I'd like to talk to them myself, if possible."

"Certainly, but they aren't around very often. I can try to get in touch with them, and call you back when I know more."

"I'd appreciate just got a lot more dangerous than I thought."

"But you're not going anywhere, are you?"

"Of course not."

"Good. In that case, I have one other piece of information for you so far. It's a long shot, but I may have a police connection for you."

"You do?"

"No promises. My sister-in-law is a detective sargeant at New Scotland Yard. I don't know her too well, but she complains about the detective inspector above her, a man named Lestrade. He sources out more difficult cases to a detective named Sherlock Holmes."

"So I should find this detective and compare notes?"

"Oh heavens no. He's notoriously difficult to deal with and completely lacking in manners."

"A man after my own heart."

"What I mean is that Lestrade might be geting desperate. It's a long shot, but it could get you more information than if you work it alone."

"I'll try." Harry downed his beer and reached out a hand. "Thanks a lot."

"Anything I can do to help." The young Warden took Harry's hand and shook it, only to find when they parted grips that a crumpled twenty pound note was in his hand. "Your drinks didn't cost th-"

"Keep the change, get yourself a good meal or something." Harry got up, straightening out his coat, and shuffled out of the bar.

Molly followed after him, and Mouse behind her. "Why did you give him all that money?"

"I've always wanted to do that, but always been too poor."

"I thought it might have been that you wanted an easy way to shut up and make a clean exit."

"That too."

"But why?"

Harry shivered a little. "Peabody. I'm not trusting anybody from the Council I don't already know, no matter how insanely helpful they are." There had been a traitor in the White Council a few months earlier, a secretary who had been slowly mind-controlling the entire organization from the top down. While the effects had since been dealt with and reversed, it left many people deeply worried and on edge. Harry, already being distrustful of a great many wizards and one of the few believing that the threat was not yet dealt with, was particularly wary. "I got my information, played nice, paid him for it, and got out of there. I'm not going to take any stupid risks. Now come on, let's go see if they have Burger King around here."

...

The next day, Harry showed up at New Scotland Yard looking like a nutter to most people. Even though he'd left the temple dog and perky goth sidekick to wait outside, he was still a freakishly tall man in a trenchcoat carrying a massive, beaten stick. Many people, both police and civillian, stared at him as he lumbered to the front desk and asked to speak to Detective Inspector Lestrade. It surprised Harry when the man at the desk nodded with a panicked expression and hurried off. Being scary paid off sometimes.

The worried-looking man returned with the grey-haired policeman, who offered his hand. "Hello, I'm Detective Inspector Lestrade."

"Harry Dresden." Harry shook his hand as he looked him over in the usual detective way.

"I understand you think you'll be of help in the recent kidnappings?"

"I do."

"Unfortunately, it's not policy to pay for consultants of the street."

"I've been hired by one of the victims' families, I'm not looking for any more money here."

"That's good to know, but I'm afraid since this is an ongoing case, there is a danger of evidence tampering, and we have our own detectives working on things."

Harry didn't want to use the 'w' word, but it was looking pretty damn bleak. "I'm not only a detective, sir. I'm a wizard."

Peple responded differently when they heard the word 'wizard'. Maybe broke out in fits of laughter at the ludicrous claim, others scoffed at him, shouted with religious intolerance, and more than a few asked for love potions. The few who took his claim seriously only did so because they'd seen something paranormal themselves, oftentimes something Harry had narrowly saved them from.

Very few ever got irritated like he did, though. "Oh, I see. Sherlock sent you."

"Who? No, I've never spoken to anyone named Sherlock before. I am here working a case, like I said."

"Do most yanks really believe in wizards?" asked some constable from the corner, which drew a soe laughter from other people around.

For once in his life, Harry bit down on his tongue hard. He was trying his damndest to get something going for hi, amidst the possibility of a Denarian walking around, and knew that insulting a beat cop would do nothing to get them on his side. "Detective Inspector, I know how this sounds. If you're unsure, I could give you the contact information of Sargeant Karrin Murphy of Chicago PD's Special Investigations division. I've worked for years as a consultant, and-"

Lestrade put up a hand to stop him, looking around and drawing a heavy breath. "I can't believe I'm going to do this, but fine. I will make some phone calls and, if your reference pans out, bring you on as an unpaid," he emphasized that word, "And unofficial consultant. I'm running out of options."

He probably had something else to say, but someone rushed to the desk area. "Detective Inspector, they've found another of the missing girls."

"Hell's bells," Harry scowled.

"Well Mister Dresden, I guess we don't have time for that. Come with me."

Harry nodded. "I'll be with you in a moment." He rushed outside to where Molly waited at the steps, waving her down. "They've found another body. Hail a taxi, have them follow the patrol cars going to the scene." He handed her some money and started to walk away.

"Why?"

"I need someone to keep an eye on the crowd for any suspicious people lingering around. Between you being a sensitive and Mouse being Mouse, you two will have a better handle on things." He dashed back inside the police station without another word.

"Let's go, boy," Molly said, looking down the street for a taxi and hoping they didn't mind big dogs.


	6. Chapter 6

The flood of police cars came to a back alley in one of the less nice parts of town. Granted, it had nothing on some corners of Chicago Harry had seen bodies dumped, but everything about the alley said 'good for corpse dumping'. The only cleaning it saw was from the rain, which did nothing to wash away all the graffiti on the buildings and the unpleasant look of the place.

All along the lines of yellow tape set up on both sides of the alley, reporters and random onlookers gathered. They watched and clamoured with the sort of expressions that showed little concern for whatever brought on the flood of police, but careless curiosity.

The strange sight of a tall man with a large stick and a trench coat passing the police tape was not something that went unnoticed by anybody. He'd have been a spectacle even without his strange gait; every step a long stride that seemed to run counter to how withdrawn he seemed. He'd always earned stares with his coat and his staff, neither the sorts of things you'd find very much on any street in the world. Still, he learned to ignore the stares, his eyes instead focusing on the alley in front of him, at the dead body slowly coming into view. He would have given the crowd a long, good look had he not noticed Molly and Mouse joining the crowd. They'd be his eyes while he handled the dirty stuff.

Just as the words 'dirty stuff' crossed his mind, the heavy, foul stench of death that went beyond words hit his nose. He choked a little, it being too long since he was last near a half-stale corpse. Every concentration method he's ever practised-and as a wizard, there were many-involved deep breaths. Beside a corpse beginning to decompose, he felt deep breaths would be the death of him. And he hadn't even turned his Sight on yet. Closing his eyes, he shook his head a little and tried to think encouraging thoughts.

"What? Was one freak not enough?"

The comment got his eyes open, because it was one of those situations where he just knew it was directed at him. Standing beside the corpse, he saw a mulatto woman with an unwelcoming expression directed squarely at him. Black hair fell in long curls down to her shoulders. With her upturned nose, it was almost as though Murphy had become black, British, and shot up a few inches. It was a little bit unsettling, actually.

Not as unsettling as the body, though. He looked down at it. June O'Donnell, one of the girls from the coven. She lay naked, the smile she had in the picture he saw torn away and replaced with a large bruise on her cheek. He noticed a clump of her shoulder-length red hair missing and a trail of bruises along her side. She put up a fight. Little good it had done her. Blood and dirt mingled with the bruises and scratches on her body. It hadn't been fast. The whole sight made Harry uneasy; no amount of young girls' bodies ever did desensitize him.

"He's a private detective, Donovan." Lestrade said. "He might know something about that piece of paper."

"Ooh, you hired a magician. When are the clowns bringing the elephant?"

Harry had been trying to play diplomatic. It hurt to hold in all the wise-ass remarks he had, but he really did want to keep in Lestrade's good graces, at least until he could get an idea about the situation and have his own look at the body. No longer, though.

"Of course. Lestrade is the reasonable cop who acknowledges that sometimes you need the scrappy outsider to come in and save the day. But, even in a position of authority, he can't make those under him have the same level of reasoning. That's where you come in, I take it, the illogical, close-minded foil to his sanity."

She looked at him strangely, and Lestrade merely turned away and took in a deep breath, muttering, "Not again." Eventually, she threw her arms up and started to walk past them.

Harry wasn't paying any more attention to her, though. He'd shut his eyes again, this time centring himself to open his Sight. An ability that any magic user of sufficient strength can use, his Sight allowed him to see beyond the physical realm that his eyes could perceive. Like the concept of the third eye, it opened his senses to what lay beneath in a more spiritual sense. It could shatter illusions and see the horrible interpretations of curses that the spirit world created. Whatever he saw stayed with him forever, and many things took horrifying eldritch forms that would never fade if he looked upon them. To avoid sharing the fate of madness-driven horror protagonists beginning their tale attempting suicide in a broken-down asylum, he didn't bust his Sight out unless it was a necessity.

Finding out if Denarians were about was a necessity.

When his eyes opened, everything was different. Colours were washed out and tinged in some sort of greyish brown, everything blurring together in long lines. Bright lights shifted about everywhere, the natural passage of energies that never sat still. People off in the distance grew spectral, glowing with dimmer versions of the lights swirling around him. He saw Lestrade, who looked much the same, save the glowing gold around him. All of the graffiti and dirt were gone from the walls, which instead took a darker shade and seemed grimier in ways approaching urban decay more than anything else.

Then, there was the body. While her physical, outward appearance was straightforward, the manifestation of her spiritual appearance wasn't. There was a radiant, silver-blue chain around her neck with a pentacle amulet, the one she wore in life that was suspiciously missing from her neck. Streaks of violent red energy ran along the bruised areas, luminously pulsating and casting a sickly red light on the ground beside her. There was a shield on the ground, facing upward and shattered into seven large pieces, making the crest difficult to discern. Damn otherworldly symbolism. He took a few steps forward and knelt down in front of the body.

Her limp, non-expression suddenly changed. Her lips drew off her teeth and stretched horrifyingly outward into a sick, and her eyes flared up with blinding red fire. Heat struck him as though it were real flame burning far hotter than anything that small should have been, and in the loose perception of reality his Sight brought, he stumbled back, almost falling flat on his ass. Cutting off his Sight, he noticed several officers around him shooting wary glances, one even turning away to hide a snicker. Surprisingly, Lestrade stood there without a mocking or sceptical expression, and instead of his hand. He accepted it, only to gasp again as he locked eyes with the detective inspector.

Another peculiar ability of wizards was the Soul Gaze. Started immediately upon eye contact so long as one of the participants was magically-inclined, it was a strange look into the most core parts of their being. Unavoidable, it was one of the reasons Harry was so physically withdrawn and averse to eye contact. It was a one-time moment between people on a level of intimacy nobody felt too comfortable about showing. For Harry, who had witnessed things with his Sight that left deep psychological scars, a gaze rarely gave him any scares. Vanilla mortals couldn't make the same claim, especially with Harry's soul, one tainted by black magic.

Mental Lestrade sat in his office, diligently at work, papers organized neatly and various items on the desk holding clear significance. His badge was most prominent among them, larger than it should have been in reality and gleaming in ways no real police badge did. The Soul Gaze provided symbolism in far less obscure terms than his Sight, and it gave him an understanding of Lestrade that was harder to gleam from how he carried himself and spoke.

The scene dragged on in his head for seconds drawn into moments by perception. When the gaze was over, he took a step back, never prepared for one and always shaken by it. Lestrade took a larger step back, his face going pale and a sharp breath leaving his mouth. Now able to look freely into the policeman's eyes, he could see worry begin to form. He waved to the constables standing around and shooed them away.

When they were out of reach, he spoke. "I-I'm sorry about that." His voice shook a little, something Harry doubted it did very much. "But I had to be sure."

"How did you know?"

He dug into his pocket and pulled a piece of paper. "This was found at the last crime scene. The consultant we hired didn't pay it any mind, and this is meaningless to anyone around the station. So I went and did some digging. A lot of bollocks came up, different websites saying different things. A few common elements kept coming up. This soul thing was one of them."

"So you were testing both your information and my legitimacy."

"Yeah, something like that. Christ, is what I saw in there normal?"

"The less you know about this, the better."

"I won't argue there," he sighed, digging his hands into his pockets.

"But, if you weren't sure, why would you bring me to a crime scene?"

He cast his eyes to Harry's staff. "Those markings. They looked gibberish enough, and you do seem like a detective. If you turned out to be a nutter and pulled something, I'd just arrest you. Now, what'd you see? That part's true, right? That you can see stuff?"

"Yeah, but sadly that just boils down to a sixth sense on where robes and leather coats are on sale." Seeing the confused look, he sighed. "Yeah, I can. She was killed by magic, definitely."

"I shouldn't be taking advice from an outsider like this, but. What do I do about it?"

"Tread lightly. Whomever did this is dangerous, and they're not to be trifled with. And if you get into a confrontation with the suspect, shoot them. Don't let them monologue, whatever you do. This is important."

He looked at Harry warily, responding doubtfully. "I'll take that into consideration."

Harry could have argued the point more, but he knew better. The person behind this wouldn't let themselves get caught by the mortal authorities, and unlike Chicago's SI unit, they didn't have the basic working idea of the supernatural to get themselves into further trouble. He'd just have to solve it before they did. He took the note from Lestrade, pulling a notebook from his pocket and very carefully copying everything exactly onto the paper for later research. "You found this at the last crime scene?"

"Yes. Sticking out of a loose brick."

Harry's eyes fell on the building to his left, the only one with brick work. The alley was worn down enough and in such a state of disrepair that cracks formed and a few bricks were outright missing, making the task harder. Not wanting to be there all day, he resorted to the next best thing.

Right in front of Lestrade and several onlooking officers, he took the silver pentacle amulet from around his neck and knelt down. The note was put to the ground, letting the battered charm dangle over the paper. His eyes closed as he pulled his will into the gift from his mother. A surge of tingling energy ran up the arm as his speciality, the tracking charm, kicked in. When his eyes opened, there was a faint illumination to the necklace, which had come to defy gravity and point at an angle toward the wall.

With several surprised watchers, he took slow steps in the direction of it, watching the amulet for subtle changes in direction, until he was at the wall and the pentacle was half an inch away from a piece of paper that blended into the white mortar work. He pulled it out and opened it.

"Within magic lie the keys, and beyond the door, power." A new set of symbols lay between two circles, like the other paper, and Harry again took pains to recreate them perfectly before handing them to Lestrade.

Dumbfounded, he accepted the paper, and then one torn from the notebook which contained the number of the hotel he was staying at. "I'll call you if we find another note."

"Detective Inspector," said someone rushing over. "I've called six times, but he's not answering."

"He's belligerent. Send a squad car to his flat, he's probably turned off his phone." Looking back at Harry, he thanked him and set off.

Walking back toward the tape, he took a long look at the accumulated crowd for suspicious people, and given the area, there were many. Generally shady folk weren't his interest, though. A stocky bald man with a forehead scar standing roughly opposite where Molly was stationed caught his eyes, but he thought little of it. Past the tape and through the parting crowd, he caught up with Molly and Mouse, who joined him in a fast walk.

"It's not Denarians," he said flatly. "Doesn't look like it, at least."

"That's good, right?"

"Hopefully. I don't know what we're dealing with, and I need to look over what few clues I have. Did you feel anyone suspicious?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. The crowd seemed pretty normal, and the only time Mouse or I felt anything was when you did your tracking spell."

Harry smiled a little, proud of his student's progress and her ability to feel things out. "Bringing you along was a good idea. Now let's head back, I need to pick up some stuff for Bob."

…...

The hotel room was chilly when they returned, the thermostat having been fully broken by the loose magic coming off of them and set to blast cold air into the room as much as it wanted. Harry kept his coat on, and Molly had on the flannel robe she in the lab. Atop the stout bureau they hadn't yet put their clothes into, a thick white sheet plastic lay to protect it from the dripping candle wax. Bob sat between the loose circle of candles.

Harry dropped a stack of brand new books beside the skull, and the orange lights in the eye holes burst to life. "Oh, how I wish I had a nose," the spirit lamented. "I've never been able to enjoy that 'new book smell' mortals are always on about." The lights shifted off to the side and read off the back of the topmost book. "Tell me, is 'stable boy' really a profession as popular as these books make it out to be?"

"Can we save the trashy erotica books for later? I need some information." He laid the tracings of the notes in front of Bob. "The killer left these by the bodies, hidden. I can't tell what these runes mean at all."

Bob scanned the papers, then dimmed his eye lights and whistled. Harry had learned to stop asking questions like ,"How could he whistle without lips?" and just accepted it. "This just got heavy, boss."

"Weight has nothing to do with it."

The eyes flickered. "This isn't a laughing matter."

"Everything's a laughing matter," Harry retorted. "Even the dangerous stuff. Come on, it's the one part of my boyhood dream to be Spider-man that's still open to me."

"Harry," he said sternly, and that rattled them a bit. Bob was as much a joker as Harry was, his personality a partial reflection of his owner's. Usually, even when the chips were down and Harry needed information, he'd crack jokes. For him to be serious was unsettling, and the wizard's posture grew more rigid, the muscles in his arms tensing. "You're not dealing with Denarians. Not by the looks of it, at least. These say 'mortal wizard' all over."

"What are they, though?"

"I've never seen most of these before."

The still Bob's sudden serious tone had built shattered, and Harry nearly fell back a little.

"But you're a spirit of intellect," Molly said, beating him to it by the space of a breath. "This is what you do, isn't it?"

"I can't know everything, particularly developments after I was banished from the Nevernever by Mab. These markings are nothing I've ever seen before."

"Then how can you tell they're dangerous?" she asked, tightening the robe around her a little.

"You can't just up and invent runes like this. Not without serious power. That Harry can't recognize them either means they're not things taught to beginners."

Harry's head raced with possibilities as he tried to piece things together. "One of the murdered men was a ritualist, and these papers were only found at the corpses after his. Could he have something to do with it?"

"Certainly." He looked over it closer. "There is some sort of code here, I believe. The way these runes are put into the middle of a circle doesn't flow at all. There would be sub-circles at work. Six layers of magic. Oh, stars and stones. This is bad."

"You said you can't recognize most of them. Which have you seen?"

"The common one on both of them. It's used in circles to bind beings. Powerful beings. Not wild fae or even demons like that one you foolishly gave your name to ten years ago. Capital 'p' powers. Harry, whatever they're trying to summon, or contain, or even control." His voice shook on that last word, but even Harry's inner smart ass didn't pick up on it as things dawned on him.

Someone was kidnapping the magically inclined of London, getting some sort of information from them, and then killing them. Or maybe sacrificing them. Whatever it was, even his magical database wasn't sure on the specifics, which did not lessen his worry at all. Bob knew everything, and if he was clueless and disturbed, things were about to get a lot worse.

"Hell's bells," he gasped, leaning away from the skull and resting his head against the side of the bed behind him. "I need to make some phone calls."


	7. Chapter 7

"This is the front desk."

"Hello," Harry said, leaning back against his headboard and sighing. "This is Mister Dresden, in room 218. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to send up a copy of the Yellow Pages." He let that hang a few seconds, before correcting himself. "Er, I'm not sure if it's the same here as in America, but it's a big directory book full of business' phone numbers."

"I know what it is, sir, but I'm afraid I'll have to check. Please wait just a moment." The audible emptiness of being put on hold followed, and Harry sighed a little, relaxing in his bed and waiting patiently. Mouse lay at the side of the bed, and he scratched his pet mastodon behind the ears to kill time. Everything grew still enough that the heavily muted sound of the shower running just barely made itself known beneath his breathing.

Eventually, the same receptionist he got the room key came back and continued. "Thank you for holding. I'm afraid we do not have any stocked down here at the reception desk. However, we do offer free wi-fi to all rooms, so you can easily find whatever it is you're looking for on their online directory."

"Bad with computers," he said, "And didn't bring one, myself."

"Oh, I'm sorry. The hotel themselves do have several copies for business use, I can confer with my manager and see if we could send one of those up to your room."

"That would be appreciated, thank you."

"Please hold."

Again, Harry settled into waiting, and soon afterwards Molly emerged from the bathroom, accompanied by steam that did nothing to abate the too-chilly temperature of the room. She was wrapped in a towel that, to Harry's surprise, managed to grant her long form some modesty. Her arms were up, rubbing a second towel furiously against her hair to try and dry it. "Any luck?"

"They don't have any at the desk, so they're seeing if they can send me one of the hotel's. Why don't people use the phone book anymore?"

"Because their phones store numbers, and everyone's on Google now. Phone books are a waste of space and paper."

"I'm looking for a magic store," he grumbled. "If they're the real deal, they'd be catering to people who can't use Google."

"Come on boss, when's the last time you met anyone paranormal with a sense of irony?"

Harry shrugged, and probably had some good retort, but was cut off by the receptionist's return. "Again, thank you for holding onto the line, sir. We've sent someone up to retrieve the book. You may bring it back to the desk when finished, or have housekeeping pick it up at the end of your stay."

"I'll keep it up here," he confirmed.

"Very well. We will have it up to your room in a few minutes, sir."

...

The problem with magic stores was that people didn't believe in real magic. Harry had gone on the speech a thousand times about how normals on the whole would never believe, always explaining away everything. As a result, skimming through the directory for a legitimate-looking magic store was not easy. Even a real store couldn't stay in business dealing only with the genuinely magically-inclined, selling stage magician parlour tricks and various resources for college girls in their Wiccan phases who would never cast a real spell in their lives. All the real books and information would be in back rooms and only heard about through word-of-mouth. For an outsider, there was little he could do but cross out the ones that looked out of the loop and hope for the best.

The magic book shop that looked the best chance wasn't too far from their hotel, so the three of them set off on foot to check it out. Harry brought his sketched runes and, just to be sure, donned his grey warden's cloak over his duster. If the shopkeeper knew a thing about magic, they would be able to identify one of the White Council's hounds from their 'uniform'. Molly led Mouse by the leash-though it seemed closer to the other way around.

"I didn't think we'd find the stores in the phone book," Molly said. "Isn't there supposed to be something about tapping a brick with a wand to find an alley full of magic stores?"

Harry groaned as they crossed the street, trying his hardest to use his staff like a cane to deflect attention. "You're going to be doing this a lot, aren't you?"

"I have to."

"Even I'm not sinking that low."

"You're just grumpy because everyone has been laughing at you since Harry Potter came out."

Instead of responding, he merely looked up and down the storefront. While the magic community bar they visited hadn't been the prettiest looking thing, it also fit in with the off street they were on. The magic shop was on a far busier and better maintained street, but also looked rather dingy. Not quite "broken and full of hooligans", more "cluttered book store managed by a not-all-there old woman and smelling of cats". Even the windows seemed to have a thick coating of dust on them.

Inside, there was indeed a thick layer of cat smell that mingled with the heavy, more familiar scent of old books. The lighting was dim, and a few people wandered the cramped aisles made by the crammed book shelves that looked about as old as the proprietor. She sat at the cash and indeed fit all of the marks for 'old lady bound to make no sense' that Harry's mental checklist looked for. Probably in at least her seventies, her glasses were woefully outdated, a little bent here and there, and lay over blue eyes glazed over and staring distantly into the ether. There was kindness in her wrinkles that had over the years been directed to fewer things until, at last, her affection was solely placed on her cats. Her face was soft, features rounded not only by time but by laziness. She sat in a chair wearing very plain clothes and stroking a black cat who lay on his side on the counter, eyes staring off into the distance.

What caught Harry's eye the most, though, was a familiar-looking bald man, average height and very thick-shoulders, with an unmistakable scar across his forehead. The memory clicked immediately of him in the crowd around the alley where they found the latest body. He wasn't sure why that man in particular had caught his eye, but there he was all of a sudden in a magic book store. He took the time to size up him quickly; not only was he stocky, but it was all thick, flat muscle, the sort gained through years of hard word and training rather than merely sculpting your body. His features were similarly flat, especially his nose, which seemed wide and squashed down.

He had begun to pull a book from the shelf, before he spotted Harry out the corner of his eye. Hastily, he pushed the book back in and set out of the door. He moved with a brisk pace, saying nothing as he walked back out into the cool afternoon.

Before Harry could tell Molly to go find him, the sound of a shotgun cocking made him turn on his heel in panic. His arm reflexively rose, the sleeve on his coat pulling back to reveal a bracelet with dangling shield charms; his shield bracelet. One of his most useful tools, it could create a magical shield capable of blocking a variety of things both magical and mundane, the most frequent being bullets.

"What are you doing here?" she said through the gritted teeth. She didn't speak angrily or shout, but there was a growl to her voice that showed her not only defensive, but calm in a situation. Calmness was tantamount in getting out of a confrontation alive. Standing upright, she pointed the shotgun straight at him, aiming it the old-fashioned way. It looked to be a fairly new gun, too. The sort the owners of dusty book stores couldn't afford or saw the need to defend themselves with.

Harry still held his arm out, Molly and Mouse getting more directly behind him so that the shield could cover them. He gripped his staff tightly with the other hand, ready to strike back if it called for it. "I came to ask a few questions."

The barrel did not shake or sway as he'd have expected it to from a woman so old and frail. "A warden of the council waltzing in here with another wizard and a temple dog? Don't take me for a fool."

"I did, I promise. My name is Harry Dresden, I am not here on some council business and my questions have nothing to do with you or your shop. I'm working a case, the recent disappearances, and I need to find a book is all."

"Why the girl and the foo dog?"

"My apprentice and smart-talking animal sidekick."

Mouse barked happily at that, and for some reason, the cat didn't go scared into another room. Instead, it nodded its head and lazily rolled onto its stomach.

She gave Harry a wary look, but brought the gun down and sighed. "I'm sorry, but everybody is being careful these days. A whole coven has gone missing, nobody feels safe anymore.

"I'm here to help with that." He lowered his bracelet, stepping over to her and handing her the two papers. "I'm looking for something that would explain the meaning of these runes."

She looked at them curiously a moment, pulling the papers close to her face. "Do you have a time frame for the book?"

Harry thought hard about that. Bob was restrained by what he had read, and that would have been reduced from "pretty much anything" after his expulsion from the Nevernever to a far more restricted list. He'd previously been in the service of Harry's now-dead warlock mentor, Justin DuMorne, and before that the famous necromancer Kemmler. Two dark wizards who would have had plenty of reasons to know what the symbols meant. That he didn't know from them meant that they may have been incredibly recent. Or they may have been almost a hundred years old and he'd just never had a shot at the book. "Within the past century, probably. Leaning more towards something in the past twenty years."

"That is a lot of books," she said. "I hope you realize this."

"I do."

"And unfortunately, my memory has worn away with age. There is no spell to absorb a book store's worth of knowledge, is there?"

Harry shook his head, only to stop midway through. "There isn't, but I may have a better solution. Business is slow, you said?"

"Very. More people every day are avoiding anything tied to the magic community."

"So if you closed down the store, how much would you be out compared to leaving it open?"

"That bald man has been my only other customer today."

"Then I have an offer for you. I will pay you a thousand pounds per day to close your shop and let my familiar read every book in the store."

The woman leaned back in her seat and looked at him with an odd smile. "That is certainly quite an offer. A thousand pounds is more money than I have ever made in a single day."

"And it would help in solving the case so your business won't be afraid to come anymore."

"Very well, warden. You may use my store, beginning from tomorrow. I live in the apartment upstairs, simply knock on my door and I will open for you."

Harry smiled, reaching out a hand, which she reciprocated. They shook on it. "And I think I will take a book with me today, just for curiosity's sake." He quickly moved to the shelf where the bald man had been standing, and there was a book loose amidst the perfectly-sorted row. "London's Ghost Stories: The Magical Truth". He wasn't yet sure how, but the stocky man was somehow involved; he had stopped believing in coincidences long ago. Pulling it from the shelf, he dug into his pocket for the money to pay. After giving her the hotel's phone number and his room number, he, Molly, and Mouse set back to the hotel.

As soon as they got outside, Mouse started barking loudly. He was a very behaved dog, calm at all times, which meant something was wrong.

The squealing of tires came next, and Harry grabbed Molly by the sleeve and pulled her too hard, making her hit the window behind him with a dull thud. A black SUV with both passenger-side windows rolled down pulled up onto the sidewalk right in front of them. There were two men with bandanas covering their faces, and just behind one he could see part of the driver; or at least, the bald head of the driver and the large scar on it.

There was some shouting, followed by the loudness of two compact sub-machine guys firing, wildly emptying their clips. The bullets struck a wide wall of blue energy, sending off large sparks with every impact as they hit the ground. Harry had brought up the shield at the last second, and gritted his teeth. Every bullet-and there must have been almost a hundred-brought an impact that made the shield harder to hold up, and he had to wrestle the recoil in his arm that would have pulled the shield away.

People on the street screamed, running for cover as the bullets bounced off the shield, breaking several windows but, thankfully, not seeming to ricochet into any bodies.

It didn't take long for the guns to click empty, both of them. As Harry lifted his staff and brought a spell to his lips, the driver set off. "Forzare!" he screamed, the shield dropping as he pushed his staff toward the car, unseen force striking the bumper of it, making the car shake and, by some bizarre luck, the licence plate screws blew off and, as it bounced, the plate itself fell flat off of it and onto the street.

They could do little else as the car sped away.

Harry ran for the licence plate before any more traffic hit, grabbing the piece of metal. The shield had taken a bit out of him and his breath was a little ragged. "I knew there was something off about him," he panted. "He's somehow involved, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer."

"How do you figure?"

"That entire thing was one of the most unprofessional hits that have ever been called out on me."

"You seem oddly calm about an attempt on your life."

"I've had the mob after me, been public enemy number one of a vampire court, and harboured a fugitive warlock with a bounty. These guys were the most disorganized and sloppy of the bunch. No masks, no extra magazines, wildly shooting into me without conserving ammo or trying to stagger their shots? He saw me in the store, called some goons, and tried to pull off the most ill-conceived hit of their life."

"Do you think they're the ones?"

"With that performance? I don't think they could have pulled any of that off. But they're involved somehow. We just need more pieces of this. Come on, let's get back and see how resistant Bob is to the plan."

...

"Absolutely not," Bob said in a tone that implied, had he a neck, he would have shaken his head furiously like a child refusing to eat his greens. "Do you have any idea how dry the writing in tomes are? You can't expect me to turn down all of these excellent new books you bought me to read about herbal remedies for small-scale curses for the next week."

"You're my familiar, Bob," Harry retorted. "I don't like pulling rank on you, but this is not up for debate. Lives are on the line and I need someone who can get through an entire bookstore in a few days. You're the only one that can do it."

"I don't think you understand. Dorian has finally helped Julia overcome her shy librarian tendencies and bring out her true beauty, and now they-"

"Name your price," Harry groaned, throwing his hands up in surrender. "How much is it going to take?"

Bob gasped in fake offence. "Why, I never! I am a spirit of integrity and morals, not to be bought or bribed."

"A thousand pounds can buy a lot of books."

"Done. Tomorrow, boss?"

Harry nodded. "Molly, you look over that book baldy was reading, I'm going to call our client and see if I can justify these expenses to her."


End file.
